Your baby's progress - Week 18

From now on, you need to be attuned to feeling your baby somersaulting around your tummy. Known as ‘the quickening’, this is one of the most exciting times in pregnancy as you feel the flutter of your baby’s movements and know for sure that he’s having a lovely old time inside you. Those sweet little movements will gradually evolve into pokes, prods, and even outright painful kicking as your break-dancing baby grows in size and tries to straighten out in his increasingly cramped quarters.

If you have an ultrasound right now, which most health experts will recommend at about this time, you might see your little one sucking his thumb, not to mention the necessary signifiers to let you know whether you've got a boy or girl inside. Of course, some babies refuse to show their genitalia in an ultrasound, and you will only get a best guess from the sonographer (not helpful if you want to know whether to buy blue or pink clothes!)

If you're having a girl, her uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes are formed and in place. Little boys will have dangly bits by now.

A protective covering of myelin is beginning to form around baby’s nerves, a process that will continue for a year after he's born. The major ultrasound you will have around this time will check that all baby’s organs are in the correct place and growing at the right rate.

Just like adults, all babies are different and develop at varying rates in the womb. This information gives a general idea of your baby's development and progress.